Most Important Personal Finance Principle

what do you think is the most important personal finance principle is it live below your means great advice really simple a lot of people don't follow it in fact I've got a video called personal finance wisdom you'll hear nowhere else where I talk about the power of being very frugal when it comes to personal expenses post tax expenses and then being very aggressive when it comes to pre-tax or business expenses and I'm a huge fan of living below your means but that's not the most important principle is it to get out of debt the G ood the good principle well no it's not either in fact I think you need to be careful when it comes to paying off debt I have a video it proves why you shouldn't pay off student loans early and I'm also a huge proponent of you never owning investment rental real estate free and clear but instead to always have long-term fixed-rate low-interest debt against that real estate and I've got a video on that as well because it makes such a big impact on cash on cash returns and several other things so no this is not the most important principle either is it to pay yourself first the timeless principle the idea that before you start spending the money that you earn you go ahead and set some aside for savings is this it great principle but no it's not the most important is it to own your own business because obviously when you own your own business you're in control of your time and you can be in control of how much money you earn in fact I put together a video directed to our graduates on how they can become wealthy more efficiently than through the traditional means of getting a job saving a little bit of money on the side and then slowly slowly slowly building up I talked about how powerful it is to own your own business and to run that successful and then take those profits and invest them but is this the most important principle it's an important one but not the most important one is it invest in real estate you're thinking ah that's what you've been driving a sad fill because you're a real estate investing guru and so you want everybody to invest in real estate well interestingly enough this is also not the most important personal finance principle and you know me first of all I wrote the book on how to be a real estate investor here it is right here in fact you can get a free copy on these videos I put a link in the top corner and I do think that real estate is the ideal investment you get the income from it if you own it long term you can get depreciation so that makes that income more tax advantage if you buy it right you get instant equity you also get the potential for appreciation and you can use leverage to acquire it so yes I think it's the ideal investment but it's still not the most important principle so what is what is the most important principle in personal finance giving or what I call returning I'll explain that in a moment so this video has taken a spiritual turn dun dun dun so if you don't like that kind of stuff you can shut it off right now but this is the most important personal finance principle and I'm gonna break it down for you giving so a quick story so I was back in my homeless days and I was just going to church and I went to church one day and the message was about tithing and I knew nothing about this obviously I'd been to church as a kid and I saw the plate go across the aisle but I really know what it's all about so the pastor was describing how in Malachi the Lord was describing it was telling the Israelites that they had robbed him they had robbed him in tithes and offerings and then he said test me in this and see if I won't open up the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing you won't have room enough to store it and that your pests will not devour your crops and then the fruit won't drop from your vines early so what the pastor was was preaching was that we should test the Lord and this idea of tithes and offerings now that particular day of Sunday morning I had about two hundred dollars in my pocket because I had refereed peewee football the day before on Saturday and that was all my money for the week and so he had shot he had challenged this that he's had given it give it a test because this was the only place in the Bible where the Lord says to test it and you know it was it was $20 which would be 10% that's what tithing is ten a tenth and I gave it a shot now look I know for some of you you're thinking well wait a minute I don't 10% okay I know I didn't have 10% then in fact that represented me either eaten beans or being able to go to Subway one day that week but what I have to lose I was already broke I was looking for ideas I was looking to test some things so I gave it a shot and here's what happened a few days later I was going to check my mail which I didn't have a physical address at the time I had a peel box so I got this this envelope and I open it up and all there was was a check for $200 and I was like what and it showed in the bottom left corner the address of a property that I had rented along with three other college buddies about a year prior and so what that was was my deposit being returned to me when I rented that place now I gotta tell you this was back in my partying heathen days and we left that place a wreck that was the last one to leave I remember and I remember walking out seeing them mattresses and this broken torn carpet think you know my gosh we're not getting our deposit back we might get a big fat bill and so to see this come in especially since I was a year later was a complete miracle and later I learned that what happened was Vanderbilt University there was actually their property they demoed it after we moved out because they were gonna build a new building so because of the demoing they had to by law I guess give us the deposit back and I don't know why the accounting took so long and then I tried to figure out how the heck they found me right because I had a peel box and it turns out that it was through mail for tea okay so it was a miracle but there were some logical explanations the point is I put $20 into the offering plate when the pastor told and told the entire congregation to test him it was a couple days later I had two hundred bucks I was sold now I will break down that this is not a cosmic vending machine and there's a lot that goes into this topic but the point is I want you to look at giving as the single most important principle and personal finance because it impacts everything else you'll ever do right it's the wind at your back it is the thing that ultimately overcomes those circumstances that are truly outside of your control some of you know what I'm talking about your doing all these things but there are circumstances in your life that you have no control over that have that have pushed you back down what I am arguing here and I by the way have been giving the offering message at my church periodically about once a month but the last eight years I've got a pretty good handle on this subject at this point I've talked to thousands of people both who have participated in giving consistently and those who have it and the bottom line is this it's the most important principle let's dive deeper into giving I refer to giving as returning and that's because it's all the creator's everything and any power you've been given has been given to you by the Creator they the power to get wealth and the power to do anything this is all the creator's now if you don't believe there's a creator there's plenty of YouTube videos out there that will prove that there is so let's move past that and let's talk about the fact that we don't own it all right some it is the Creator that owns everything and we are stewards of it so when you have that perspective it really shapes the way you look at giving because I'm not giving what is mine I'm returning what is his or as RG Letourneau might when my favorite Christian entrepreneurs would say it's not how much of my money I give to God it's how much of God's money I keep for myself so if we look at it in terms of returning that also sets the context for a healthy relationship with money it eliminates greed because we're not looking at it in terms of my mind mind my mind in terms of how productive can I be with my time with the talents and the gifts that the Lord has given me and then what can I do to impact society right and so when you are returning back to the Creator effectively what you're also doing is impacting lives I so often hear where people want to know what their purpose in life is well I will assure you of this your purpose in life is not completely selfish part of your purpose in life is to impact and help the greater good it really really is so when you're looking and praying for your purpose just remember that it's probably more likely that that purpose is going to impact lives versus just impacting you so if you're returning it's also making a huge impact on the world and it also means that you don't look at the idea of personal finance from the perspective of reaching some level such as retirement early and then stopping but instead you look at it like the more productive I am the more I can help others so you don't get caught in the trap of early retirement look you a lot of y'all wonder why I still work I don't need to I haven't needed to in a very long time but part of it is because I'm a part of this returning program not at the 10% level a lot higher than that as if you've ever watched the movie office space I don't wear the minimum amount of flair right right right ooh go to the max and so part of it is because the more productive I continue to be the more I can impact other people's lives I have no interest in retirement I don't talk about retirement on my videos I talk about being more productive so this helps helps with a healthy context now I was also mentioning this idea of a cosmic vending machine okay so that's not how returning to the Creator really works right the Lord loves a cheerful Giver this is about you bringing back to him what is rightfully his and then he will bless you but it doesn't always mean money this is not this is not the prosperity gospel here there's a lot of other ways to be blessed besides just money but here's the thing he does it all because see God God's got a bigger bucket so the more you shovel at him the more he's gonna shovel back at you and there's no way you can catch up his buckets bigger and and I think it's so important that you recognize this is not about well I'm gonna put this in but I'm expecting something back this is you're putting this in because you're already more than blessed if you're watching this video chances are you are in the top top echelon of anybody in the world you're already crazy blessed right and so this is about returning back to the Creator and that gives him the opportunity to bless you even more but not just in economics but in every aspect of your life so I hope this helps you better understand the passion I have for this now you might be asking the question all right well what kind of places should I give back to should you return to the Creator that question fact it was john d rockefeller who was one of the wealthiest people ever in world history whose biggest challenge was where to give the money where to return it because he could actually earn it more efficiently than he could find the right organizations to plug those resources into now these days we have a lot of great organizations I believe money is like manure if you let it pile up it'll stink but if you spread it around it'll fertilize so I do believe that when it comes to the subject of returning you don't return all in one place now if you are a part of a church you're a Christian you are called to tithe 10% to your local church so that is a standard right there and then everything above that that's where you getting get flexible those are your non-christians you're not going to church okay we'll just move on to that segment that even us Christians and what not that we are giving and we're spreading like manure were spraying around so one of my favorite is compassion international sponsoring a child I sponsor a lot of children across the world it's a remarkable organization third party independent studies have proven their effectiveness so big fan of compassion comm I'm also a big fan of Samaritan's Purse that's Franklin Graham's organization there they typically are first responders when it comes to disasters and whatnot remarkable organization I also do quite a bit in in contributing to missionary work all across the world I think that's a very important piece but I also contribute to my local communities missionary work I am I was one of the founders of Orlando serve Foundation which is a homeless organization that does absolutely extraordinary things for the homeless community in the Central Florida area in fact I heard this story a couple of days ago so we do these events in these local community centers where we help the homeless get their their driver's license back so they can go get a job we help them overcome certain legal matters and things that just get them stuck and there's no other organizations that do it and so we do these events and we try to you know we bring little the judges there and bring in the technology so they can literally hold court and and solve some of these problems that the homeless have had that have held them down for decades in some cases this one gentleman was there he was formerly a successful business owner but through some legal problem literally wrecked his business wrecked his life his wife and two children were living in a motel and he had gotten so angry and he used to be in the military he gotten so angry here that week was at the point where he was going to kill the people that had caused him all those legal problems he wasn't gonna kill innocent people or already called innocent he was gonna he was gonna kill the people that caused him the problems and he went to that event one of these they're called he got up events with a Lannister foundation and he got plugged in got some his legal matters headed on the right track after two years of him not been able to do it himself he gave his heart to Jesus Christ and he literally his entire world changed that day and it wasn't just his world that changed that day it was the people that he planned on killing that he didn't so the point is when it comes to this concept of returning it's about impacting other people's lives spreading this thing around the great news is there's an enormous amount of amazing organizations that need more financial resources that's in some respects what you've been called to do you've been called to produce great economic results so you then can spread them around wisely and really fertilize those amazing organizations that are impacting thousands if not millions of lives and I also see this as an amazing opportunity for our country who's so divided politically right now that if everyone was willing to be a part of this returning program you think of the amount of money that could go into these private organizations that could then help and that way we aren't always asking the government to do that or do this or do that we have private organizations to do it all right that's I don't want to get too political there but I see a greater dream here so I hope that this video helps some of you might find this controversial but I'm telling you you will not find someone who's been on this program for any length of time to say boy my life's miserable you won't find it test the Lord in this he tells you to do it test him in this see what happens you'll see it is absolutely remarkable the way he can bless your life all right well I'm Phil pussy-ass with freedom Entercom if you have questions or comments put them down here below I'm sure you will I want to hear about them if you've got some great organizations that you recommend and that people contribute to put them in the comments so people can scan through those you've heard what I like but there's always so much more out there and thank you so much for watching my videos if you want to become a first class market leading real estate investor I do have an apprentice program or my team and I we mentor and we turn people into money making machines partly that for their own good but also for the good of others thank you so much and I'll see on the next video

Channel: Phil Pustejovsky

Views: 24,116

Rating: 4.7913609 out of 5

Keywords: Tithing, Giving, Personal Finance, Phil Pustejovsky, Freedom Mentor, Pay Yourself First, Real Estate Investing, Debt Free, Get Out of Debt, Start Your Own Business, Live Below Your Means, Donations, Compassion International, Samaritans Purse, Franklin Graham, Orlando Serve Foundation, He Got Up, Own Your Own Business

Id: OkkdPNfsabQ

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019